*This tentative table of contents is for early review purposes; the final contents may not include all of the selections listed here.
List of Illustrations.
About This Edition.
Introduction.
Table of Dates.
King Lear.
Contexts.
Merbery, A Brief Discource of Royal Monarchy as of the Best Commonweal (1581).
Smith, De Republica Anglorum (1583).
James VI, True Law of Free Monarchies (1598).
Gouge, “On the duties of parents to children, duties of children to parents.”
Montaigne, “Of the Affection of Fathers to their Children.”
Guazzo, Civil Conversation.
Dekker, Batchelor's Banquet.
Edward Jorden, A Brief Discourse of a Disease called the Mother (1603).
Erasmus, Praise of Folly.
Montaigne, Sebond.
Machiavelli, Discourses upon the first Decade of T. Livius (1520 trans. 1636).
Textual Problems.
Later Readings and Rewritings.
Nahum Tate's ending (1681).
Johnson's comments.
Moncrieff, Lear of Private Life (1828).
Lamb on unstageability.
Hazlitt.
Blake's Tiriel.
Keat's Sonnet “On sitting down to read King Lear.”
Coleridge.
A.C. Bradley.
Jane Smiley
Further Reading and Viewing.
